Text message support in OMC

Scott Forsyth

Posted on 13/09/2016 02:47:35

We have a new customer which will launch in March 2017 who's user base has mobile devices but many don't have email addresses. They need a way to text all of their customers to announce the new site launch and to draw them to the new website.

It would be nice to be able to send text messages in a similar way to email messages in the OMC. It could support smart searches, a small message, and of course links could be included in the message. I'm sure that tracking and stats wouldn't be as relevant, except if they click on a link.

Twilio (https://www.twilio.com) could be used for the platform and we would just need to plug in settings for a Twilio account.

There are many customers that would use this.

And, to take this further, another feature that we get asked for sometimes is to send other confirmations, shipping confirmations, and possibly form submissions as a text message. It would be nice to have text support alongside any place where there is email ability. However, it would need to support a user level flag to determine if users should be emailed or texted.

This second request isn't as important as the OMC feature though. The OMC feature would be very usage and we have a specific use case. The texting in the other modules would be a bonus item which we'll put to good use once we know that it's available.

Thanks,

Scott

Replies

Scott Forsyth

Posted on 15/09/2016 17:32:13

Well ... never mind this request. I see that there has been an SMS module for quite a while now. It's not enabled by default so it just needs to be turned on. I vaguely remember when it came out and completely forgot about it. It looks great as it is so we can consider this feature request already done. :)

Scott Forsyth

Posted on 15/09/2016 18:36:51

Actually, after looking at this more, I do have a request. The functionalty looks promising, but we would want to use other SMS providers, like Twilio. Can you add Twilio support, and maybe other support that requests a username and password? Twilio would be the first one that I recommend looking into. They have a great API and are easy to use.

The current provider with only email address doesn't appear like it will work in the US.

Thanks,

Scott

Nicolai Pedersen

Posted on 16/09/2016 08:59:32

This post has been marked as an answer

Hi Scott

Yeah, most of it is in that module. It uses email to sms gateways to send out the text messages. A quick search says Twilio does not have that service directly.

I can give you a extensibility point in EmailHandler that makes it possible for you to change behavior everywhere emails are send.

Then in your userdatabase you can add email addresses for users that does only have mobile in the format 123456789.sms@bogusdomain.com and when you see these in the email handler, change the delivery to use Twilio APIs.

Using this approach you can intercept everything that is sending out emails and just make sure your logic will send in the above format, i.e. when ordering in Ecommerce.

BR Nicolai

Votes for this answer: 1

Scott Forsyth

Posted on 16/09/2016 16:20:00

Hi Nicolai,

Yes, that would work well. We can add a simple add-on to handle the Twilio API, and since there is a pattern in the address, we can run with it. The extensibility point will be great.

Thanks,

Scott

Developer forum

Text message support in OMC

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